


Sweet Pea

by IronShieldGal



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Before the Last Of Us part 2, Ellie and Joel have a father-daugher relationship, Gen, Lee Everett is A Bad Rolemodel, Major character death - Freeform, Sadness, Takes place After the Last of Us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 03:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronShieldGal/pseuds/IronShieldGal
Summary: In which Joel has heard of Lee Everett, and thought to himself: hey... I can do that too.





	Sweet Pea

Sweat Pea 

 

 

Heavy gates groan as they open for what is in comparison a tiny silhouette: a man and a teenage girl on a horse. The man’s hair and beard are mostly grey, with hints of the brown it once must’ve been hidden in between the silver. His brown leather jacket looks worn and patched up, with blood stains that nobody even bothered to try to remove. 

 The girl is small, almost drowning in her oversized jacket, the hood almost falling over her eyes. Her hair is tied back, her sneakers have more blood stains than mud on them and she’s way too young to have a hunting rifle stuck to her backpack and a pistol in her belt. 

 She itches her lower arm, then leans forward to ask the man something. The man just grunts and hides his smile from the girl. His backpack is even heavier loaded with weapons: a rifle, a shotgun, a bow and a flamethrower. He’s got a pistol, a revolver, a double-barreled shorty and a pistol with a scope on top. 

 A brown-haired man stands on top of the gates next to a blonde woman, and while she just stares at the two people on the horse, the man waves. The girl on the back of the horse notices, and she waves back enthusiastically. The blonde woman smiles and leans into the man. She says something, and while she’s too far away to be heard, it’s certain she’s talking about the two coming home safely, and how she fears they won’t.

 Some -namely Joel and Ellie themselves - would say it’s a silly fear. They have gone on multiple supply runs since they joined the settlement, with other people at first, and when it became clear the two worked better as a team, Tommy gifted them with another horse on the condition they don’t get this one killed, and sent the trio out every few months to scour for supplies. 

 Because Joel never seems to learn from his mistakes he let Ellie name this horse, too, and that’s the story of how he got to ride a yellow horse with black legs and mane named Virgil. 

 Virgil’s even worse than Callus, in his own humble opinion, but Ellie wouldn’t hear jack shit about it. 

 Ellie’s green eyes stare from underneath her hood as she takes in the environment. They’ve spent almost six months at Tommy’s, now, and summer’s making way for autumn. Leaves are browning and leaving their trees, and Ellie’s pondering on how, the last time the leaves turned brown, she and Joel were arriving at Tommy’s settlement for the first time. They’d left Pittsburgh and their two allies (friends?) buried behind and started anew. Ellie liked to think that Autumn was the time Joel started to actually like her, because she knows it’s definitely when she started to appreciate him. 

 She’s humming under her breath, a tune Joel taught her to play on the acoustic guitar he’s managed to get her, and it’s not too long before she hears Joel join in with the words. 

 It took her almost dying from a fever to get him to sing for her. She was so cold, and so hot, and her mind was so bothered. She couldn’t do anything but cry, and suddenly there was a soothing voice and a cold wetness on her forehead. 

 Since then, it became easier and easier to persuade him to sing for her, to the point where she just had to hum a tune when it was just the two of them. 

 She likes it when he sings. It makes her feel safe, secure and protected. The way he avoids her gaze to stare into the distance makes her feel loved in a way that’s too painful for him to admit to. 

 “Do you think there’s anything left to gather?” she asks him. She feels him shrug, and knows she just has to wait for him to talk. 

 “I reckon we took just about everything there was to take,” he says. “And if we left anything, bandits’ll sure have gotten it. They’ve been expanding, and they’re getting bolder. Reckon it’s just a matter of time before they try to raid us again.” 

 Ellie takes in this information and nods while she absentmindedly pets Virgil on his behind. “Then why don’t we steal from them? Take their supplies and kill some of them, and they’ll be in no shape to come after us,” she says. 

 Joel seems to consider this for a moment. “Might be a good idea,” he says. “We could get some of the good stuff too -medicine, for example.” He pauses, and then nods to himself. “Yeah, yeah alright. Let’s go raid them bandits.” 

 

 Virgil is hidden behind some bushes a safe distance away from the bandit settlement. He’s trained to stay there until they come get him, or until he’s in danger -then he’s trained to return home. 

 Joel is counting his bullets and reloading his weapons, and Ellie’s doing the same next to him. She’s done before he is, so she checks on her switchblade. Still sharp, after years of use. She gives the blade a loving pat and then tucks it away. 

 “Alright, so we’re going to take this as stealthily as possible. I want the people we leave alive know we’ve been here only after we’ve gone, yeah?” Ellie nods in confirmation and makes sure her bow is ready to be grabbed and fired in seconds. It is. 

 Joel clears his throat. “You’re gonna stay behind me and watch my back. Stay low, stay quiet, and stay focused. We’re going to have to do this together and I trust you to protect our backs, yeah?” he asks, and Ellie nods again. Yeah, she’s had Joel’s back for ages, since before he trusted her with it. “Quick, quiet, and careful,” she says, and Joel nods with a grim smile. “Exactly. Now we might have to split up at some point, but we’ll coordinate that moment by moment. If you lose me, try the whistle,” he’s talking too much again: she knows all of this. They planned their strategy the first time they went out on a raid together and they’ve perfected it since. But, Joel’s nervous about losing her, and she knows that, so she lets him talk and she nods and repeats words where necessary. 

 “If we can’t find each other by whistling, rendes-vous point is by the horse. Go there immediately when you can’t find me -don’t try to steal some stuff, we can always go back in again,” Joel instructs her. She kind of wants to make a joke to lighten up the expression on his face, but this isn’t the time for it. 

 “If I lose you and I can’t find you I go straight to Virgil,” she dutifully repeats, and Joel nods grimly. “A’ight, let’s go then.” He glances back over his shoulder to make sure Virgil is hidden well, and then his feet find the road again. 

 They find two guard posts on their way into the city; the first one Joel takes out with an arrow and the second he makes Ellie take out with her switchblade because “I can’t be sure of my aim with my arrow and my bones are too old to get up there,” but Ellie hears the underlying “you need to be able to do this alone when I’m gone” that they both know and won’t acknowledge at any point soon. 

 Her switchblade finds the guard’s neck easily and he goes down with no more noise than a gurgle. She takes his rifle ammo and both the apple and the chocolate bar he had up there with him. She shows her findings to Joel when she gets down and he nods at her, a proud smile almost making its way towards his lips. 

 It doesn’t have to be visible for Ellie to know it’s there. 

She puts the rifle ammo away and counts up in her head. She’s got twenty-one rifle shots in her bag now, which is a fuckton, and she also hopes she won’t need them. 

 They move stealthily and quickly, and before they know it they find themselves in the storage room the bandits keep. There are a lot of dead bodies hidden behind them with arrows in their heads or gashes in their throats, moved out of sight to buy the duo some time. 

 Joel throws Ellie an extra bag and she starts filling it with all sorts of canned foods, bottled water and even some medicine and explosives. She ends up at a door on the other side of the room, with black paint on it spelling “armory”. “Hey Joel,” she says, keeping her voice low, “there’s an armory here. Bullets, and guns,” she says, looking through the little window. “I can see at least five rifles, and there’s a fuckton of pistols on the table back there,” she murmurs. “Get it,” Joel replies, so she opens the door. 

 Which, of course, is fucking rigged and they walked right into the trap. 

A wire trips and another door opens while simultaneously knocking down a bag of empty cans, which makes a lot of noise. Out the door storm infected -stalkers. They’ve been there a while. “Infected!” Ellie warns Joel as she tries to shut the door. The stalkers reach through and she’s simultaneously pushing the door closed as hard she can and evading the stalker arms grabbing for her. A machete appears behind her, hacking away at the arms and the rhythm of it throws her back to a lodge on fire, a dead man beneath her and a machete in her hands. She can almost feel the smoke in her lungs and has to suppress a coughing fit. 

  _No, no he’s dead and you’re gone, it’s over and you’re here and Joel fucking needs you,_ she tells herself in her head. “Hold it for a sec,” Joel says, and the full force of a dozen stalkers pressing against her comes back as Joel withdraws. “Okay, so let go and jump back at my word,” he says, and she doesn’t look up, she keeps focused on her task and she trusts Joel so if he wants to let the stalkers in that’s fine and - “Now! Ellie jump!” he says, and she gives the door a mighty shove as she leaps towards behind Joel, whipping out her pistol and aiming it at the door. 

 They’re on fire. Joel threw a molotov and now they’re on fire. “Don’t fire,” Joel says, still as quiet as possible if he still wants to be heard above the stalkers. “I don’t think the bandits noticed us yet,” he hacks into the crowd of burning stalkers and they fall, one by one, and then Ellie joins in with her switchblade and somehow, against impossible odds, they do it. Ellie’s trying to dispatch the last one but it’s being difficult -keeps swinging its arms in her face so she can’t get close with her blade. A machete catches the thing in the face and it falters, surprised. Ellie leaps forward and sinks her switchblade into its neck, tearing it open with one flick of her wrist. Blood splatters on her face and her cool new hoodie, but the stalker drops and it was the last one. Joel screams. 

 Ellie has her pistol in her hand and aimed at the head of the stalker attacking Joel before she’s even fully turned around, but Joel smacks it in the face -his machete is still stuck in the other stalker’s head- and then Ellie dives forward to stab this one too. In the face, and again and again and how dare it try to take Joel away from her, she can’t deal with that, Joel can’t leave her, he can’t- “Ellie,” Joel says, and she stops stabbing the dead stalker. She backs up and wipes her switchblade clean on her jeans, then pockets it. She moves to the other stalker and pulls Joel’s machete out of it’s brains. She cleans it on the sucker’s clothes. The machete feels familiar and heavy and scary in her hand, so she hands it over to Joel. 

 He doesn’t take it. 

He’s staring at his hand. “Joel,” she says. He doesn’t look up. No. “Joel, I don’t think they noticed us. We can grab the guns and the ammo and get the fuck outta here,” she continues, sliding the machete in her own belt. She starts gathering ammo, ignoring the fact that Joel’s not doing anything. She packs up a bag full of ammo and guns, then another bag with rifles and shotguns, and if they’re quick they might be able to take all of this. She drops the two bags next to Joel, and looks up at him. “Joel!” she hates how scared her voice sounds. He looks at her, his eyes wide and his face white. “Ellie,” he says. 

 He starts crying. 

Joel is crying. Somehow her world found a way to turn upside-down when she wasn’t paying attention, and she doesn’t know what to do. It’s Joel who eases away her tears with a cup of tea and a song after she dreams of that winter. It’s Ellie who tells jokes and makes funny faces, tells anecdotes of the times she had with Riley when Joel wakes up from a nightmare. He never cries, he never even tells her what he dreamt about -she can guess, though. Sarah. Or her. Or Tess, or Tommy, or anyone he remotely cared or cares about. 

 She doesn’t look at the bite on his hand, she refuses to see it and acknowledge this is happening.

 Joel sits down. For some reason, this pulls Ellie out of her shock, and she shakes her head. She sees red. “No, no Joel, you don’t get to do this! You don’t get to give up on me now!” she almost screams but remembers to keep her voice down. If the bandits find them… they’d be dead, like they already are. Joel is going to die and Ellie’s not going to survive for long without him. 

 “Ellie, I’m infected, there’s nothing we can do,” Joel says, and Ellie shakes her head. “There are a thousand things we can do,” she says. She hears Riley in her head, but refuses to acknowledge the girl. There are more things to do than either bite a bullet or wait to die. 

 “You could be like me,” she says, and oh she hates how broken and desperate her voice sounds, she hates it so fucking much. Joel laughs, a grim, hopeless sound. “I’m not like you, Ellie,” he says. He’s playing with his pistol. She has the urge to rip it out of his hands. “We could try cutting it off. If we’re quick enough it might take,” she says. 

 Joel looks up to her, and sees something in her face that makes him nod. “Yeah, yeah alright. We can try that. You’re going to need to cut it off, though. Think you can do that?” he asks, and she huffs. “If it saves your life, I can do anything.” 

 If she could die right now and give whatever secret is in her cordyceps invaded brain so she could save him, she would. 

 “Alright. You’re going to take my backpack and my stuff, you’re going to leave your switchblade here, and you’re going to have to find some stuff for me,” he says. Ellie nods, pulls out her switchblade and hands it to him. He sets it to the wound, that hasn’t bled until now. Rivers of red drop to the floor.  He sees her looking. “The stream of blood cleans the wound. It might slow the infection,” he redirects his gaze to where he’s cutting into his own hand, and continues giving her orders. “We’re going to have to be quick and quiet, and then we gotta get out of here as fast as possible. You’re going to have to bring me some stuff. I need something to bite down on so I don’t scream. We’re going to need cloth –preferably actual bandages, too. Tape, doesn’t matter what kind as long as it’ll stick to skin. We’re going to have to shut down the bloodstream as much as possible, so I’m going to need a tourniquet. Get something you can fasten as tight as possible. If you can find it, get some antibiotics or pain killers, but they’re not necessary. Be quick, and don’t get noticed,” he orders. 

 She takes off her backpack and straps on his. It’s big, but not too big for her. “Joel,” she says, and he knows exactly what she means. “If this doesn’t work, you’re going to have to get used to carrying it,” he says. 

 She fingers the machete in her belt and hands over her pistol and rifle to Joel. He positions himself in front of the door. If anyone comes in, they can get an arrow to the throat. 

 She nods to herself, she can do this. She can do this. She’s going to save Joel and he might lose a hand but she can’t lose him, dammit.  
  
When she returns, Joel is sitting in the exact same place, staring at his feet. “I got the stuff,” she says, her voice thick. He looks up and she resolutely ignores the tear tracks on his face. She helps him up –he shouldn’t need it yet, it’s hasn’t even been an hour—and he walks over to one of the tables. With a swoop of his arm he clears the surface and then puts his lower arm on it.

 She helps him tie the tourniquet, then lies out the bandages and tape (with scissors for quickest use). She gives him the stick –about three fingers thick and an arms length long- to bite down on.

 Then she takes the machete from her belt. He taps his fingers of his other hand just below the inside of his elbow. She lets the machete hover a few inches above it. “Quick, and clean,” she whispers. “You ready? On three,” she says. Joel shuts his eyes, braces himself and bites down on the stick. “One... Two…” And like in all the books she’s ever read, she goes on two. She swings down and the machete catches in the flesh. Joel grunts, but manages not to make too much noise. Ellie sniffs, feels tears clouding her eyes as she pulls the machete back. No, now is not the time for tears. Joel needs her to do this, and to do this right. She aims, carefully, and the machete goes down, and Joel’s lower arm is cut off from the upper arm.

 She drops the machete and grabs the bandages. She bandages Joel the best she can, taping the bandages to his skin, as he’s groaning and moaning about the pain.  

 “Joel, we need to go,” she says. Her voice is shaking, _why_ is her voice _always FUCKING SHAKING_. 

He spits out the stick, bends over to grab the machete from the floor and he hands it to her. He also hands her back her switchblade. She shoulders his backpack again, and then looks at her own. “Transfer everything you need from your backpack to mine,” Joel says. His voice is strained.

 She gets on her knees and does as he asked. Bullets and guns and arrows. She throws her rifle and her bow into the bags they were going to take. Riley’s pendant and her joke books, her buttons, the note from her mother all disappear into Joel’s bag.

 She zips up the bag and throws it over both her shoulders. She grabs one duffel bag and hands Joel the other. “Can you walk?” she asks, grabbing her pistol and checking if it’s loaded. Nine bullets. “Yeah. Just… Lead the way,” Joel says.

 Ellie just nods and opens the door.

They make it out alive, and, by some miracle, unnoticed. She helps Joel mount Virgil and they speed away.

 

They’re almost halfway there when Joel falls off the horse.

Honestly, she should’ve seen it coming, his head was lulling and he was riding like a potato sack. She stops the horse and, just like last time, manages to drag Joel inside. She gets Virgil inside, too, and when she comes back inside, Joel is sitting on the floor, back leaning against a couch, and his face is white as a sheet.

 He looks worse than he did that winter, when she thought he was going to die.

“Joel,” she says. He doesn’t look up. “Joel!” He blinks and lifts his head. His eyes are glazy. “You stupid, fucking idiot!” she’s screaming. She’s well aware that she’s screaming at the most important man in her life while he’s dying, but she can’t accept it. She won’t. “Why didn’t you let the Fireflies dissect me, huh! If you would’ve just let them, they would’ve had a vaccine and you’d be safe now! You, you…” she’s crying now, tears streaming down her face. “How dare you,” it’s barely a whisper, and Joel reaches out to her. She comes closer and buries her head in his chest. His arms fall around her and she sobs. “Joel, you can’t leave me. I can’t do this alone, please,” she begs through her tears. “Don’t do this to me Joel, don’t do this to me, please.”

 “Oh, baby girl,” he whispers. “I wasn’t gonna let some fucking self-entitled doctor hurt you so he can claim to save humanity when there’s nothing left of it. I couldn’t do it. I already lost Sarah, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t lose you, too,” he says.

 Ellie doesn’t know what to say. “Fuck you.”

Joel laughs, breathlessly, with huffs and puffs and his chest rises and falls with short, shocking movements. “I love you, Ellie,” he says. “I love you like a daughter. I… I suppose you knew that already, but I just… just had to say it once.”

 His eyes droop. “I’m not going to make it, sweet pea,” he says. “We both know that. So please, go home. Tommy’ll take care of you,” he says. Ellie shrugs helplessly. “What about you?” she asks. “I suppose I will… I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t want to be one of them,” he admits, and if Ellie didn’t know better she’d swear it was fear in his voice.

 “I…” she hesitates. “Please, please don’t go,” she says, instead.

“I don’t want you to see me like that,” Joel closes his eyes. “Please leave before it happens.”

 “I don’t want you to be that,” she says, and Joel hiccups. “No choice, sweet pea.”

Ellie pulls her gun from her belt. “If… if you’d want, I would…” she whispers. Joel opens her eyes and looks at her. “I can’t let you do that,” he says.

 “I did it once. I could do it again,” she says, thinking of Riley.

Remembering how she wrestled Riley’s gun from the infected girl’s body and then just… shot her. Right in the face. Some survival instinct inside her hadn’t given up back then, even if her mind had.

 “Ellie,” he says. “Do you want it or not,” she snaps at him. He closes his eyes again, looking more tired than she’s ever seen him. “Please,” he breathes so quietly she almost can’t hear him.

 Ellie closes her eyes and her breathing is shaky. “Alright. Alright, I can do that. I… I love you too, you know,” she says.

 “Let me share something with you… Something Tess would’ve wanted to tell you, but…” he says. Ellie nods. “Yeah, I’m listening, and if it’s going to be something lame like ‘give your horses cooler names, Ellie, what is wrong with you,’ then I’m going to be very upset with you.”

 Joel huffs out another laugh. “No. She said to me once… Do you wanna know why I keep my hair short? I said that I thought she believed it made her look prettier. It was, she said, so that people couldn’t grab her hair. Bandits have pulled that trick before, and they tried often. I once saw a woman die because Infected got hold of her hair. So, in short, sweet pea… Keep that hair short,” he says. Ellie reaches back to tug on her ponytail.

 “Yeah, yeah alright. I will, I promise,” she says. Joel emits a sound that, from anyone else, would be named a sob. “I’m gonna miss you, baby girl,” he says. Ellie sobs herself, too. “Me, too,” she says.

 She backs away when Joel starts coughing. “Now, baby girl, please,” Joel’s voice is so hoarse he’s almost unintelligible. “Please. Tell Tommy I’m sorry for everything, and that I love him. And, Ellie, I love you.”

 With her heart falling into a black abyss, Ellie pulled the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative Title: Joel gets what’s fucking coming for him, stupid idiot, punching things in the face when their teeth kill you on impact is always a stupid idea. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also free chocolate chip cookie to everyone who can name the /two/ fictional character deaths i have refrenced in this. One is pretty obvious, the other I have a lot of pent up frustration about. If I found the person who wrote that scene I am not certain I won't stab him.


End file.
